Social Science Teams among 2015 Golden Goose Winners
Recipients of the 2015 Golden Goose Award were honored at a ceremony in Washington, DC on September 17. The Golden Goose Award recognizes researchers whose federally funded work may have seemed odd or obscure when it was first conducted but has resulted in significant benefits to society. COSSA is a supporter of the Award. The 2015 recipients included a group of psychologists whose work on delayed gratification in children (the “marshmallow test”) had far-reaching implications for our understanding of human behavior, education, and health. The Golden Goose Award also honored two scientists whose collaborative research on “hypsographic demography” (the study of how the population is distributed with respect to altitude) that has had impacts on areas from manufacturing to cancer research.
The ceremony featured remarks for several congressional supporters of the Golden Goose Award, including Representative Jim Cooper (D-TN), who helped found the awards, Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), and Representatives Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), Randy Hultgren (R-IL), and Robert Dold (R-IL). Sen. Coons applauded the Award for highlighting the “crucial and unpredictable” insights research can provide. Rep. Dold acknowledged the responsibility of Congress to ensure adequate research funding and suggested legislators should be thinking about doubling the budget for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) once more.